The Colossal and Abyssal Apathy of the Universe Towards You
A piece on Depressive Suicidal Black Metal (DSBM)
This text originally appeared in Black Metal Rainbows (2023), edited by Stanimir Panayotov and Daniel Lukes. Some readers have requested it, so here is the pdf.
“The universe…cannot suffer on your behalf, although perhaps you can suffer on its behalf. But more than this: the universe does not care about you, about what you do. You are of no interest to it; it is indifferent to you. There is no measure; you do not have a place. You could be, and are, just anyone, or, seen another way, no one. We hear echoes of this claim in Jean Genet’s narrator of The Thief’s Journal: ‘I am alone in the world, and I am not sure that I am not the king.’”
EVERY angry, marginal, experimental subculture seems to have male members overrepresented… EXCEPT (perhaps) the gender ideology social contagion. Perhaps that is because it prioritizes subjective feelings (making them the foundational fact upon which all society and knowledge must be based)… and because it promotes the rejection of the adolescent body. When I read Eliza Mondegreen’s posts I’m struck by how much transmasc/NB material is really just a discomfort with having a woman’s body and sexuality.
But other than that, every hopeless and antisocial and marginal subculture I can think of is packed with men: greasers, homeboys, hardcore fans…
These kinds of inquiries can be extremely useful in peeling back cultural narratives, and exposing deepest realities that academics and policymakers refuse to acknowledge.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/the-primacy-of-subjectivity
The opioid crisis it is true seems limited to America, but in this case Canada belongs as well.